Motive, Method, Opportunity
by L.M.Lewis
Summary: Mark figures it out.


Disclaimer: These are not my characters and I make no profit from them.

**Author's Note: **The morning after Mark first arrives at Gull's Way, two of Martin Cody's henchmen turn up in his new quarters and stage an attempted kidnapping. As Deanna pointed out, this raises some serious questions. How did they know where to find him, right down to the very bedroom? Here's a not-so-serious answer.

It's AU, of course.

**Motive, Method, Opportunity**

by L.M. Lewis

Eventually, after what seemed like a week of non-stop activity crammed into three days, the dust settled. Mark didn't get back to Hardcastle's estate until after dinner.

"You eat yet?" the judge asked casually as he let him in.

The smell of pot roast still wafted from the dining room. Mark shook his head.

"I told Sarah you'd be late." Hardcastle frowned. "How late were ya?"

"Not very." Mark felt a grin creeping out. He tempered it into a smile. "Got signed off with Dalem. He said he'd like you to call."

Hardcastle nodded judiciously as he stepped aside for McCormick to pass. "I'll send him a copy of the LVPD report."

Mark found himself ushered down the hall. The judge appeared to have been halfway though a piece of pecan pie and the main course had been removed. There was a second place set—just flatware.

"Hey, Sarah," Hardcastle raised his voice to be heard in the kitchen, "got another mouth to feed."

"I can get my own," Mark said hastily.

"Not in Sarah's kitchen. Siddown." The judge pointed to the chair.

Mark sat, and only a moment later the housekeeper appeared in the doorway from the kitchen bearing a plate and an expression that was hard to interpret. She set it down in front of him, though, with no comment or unnecessary force. The smell was more glorious still, up close, and would have been even if he hadn't been ravenous.

"Thanks, um, Sarah." He thought maybe he shouldn't be on a first name basis with the woman but he didn't know if it was Miss or Mrs. Wickes. He smiled lightly and added, "Looks great."

"It would have been an hour ago," she observed tartly. Then she tempered that with, "There are seconds if you want them."

She departed. Hardcastle sat down to tackle the remains of his pie, and Mark dug in.

It was just as good as it had looked, held over or not. The pot roast was aswim in its own juices, the potatoes were lump-free, and the lima beans were buttery. And there were rolls—_homemade_ rolls.

It occurred to Mark that the food had probably been this good the day before they'd left for Las Vegas, but his need for vengeance must have interfered with his ability to appreciate it. He demolished the roast and mopped up the last of the potatoes almost before Hardcastle had finished his dessert.

The older man glanced over at him. "You're not on a schedule, ya know."

Mark looked down at his plate, almost clean enough to skip the washing. He looked up again and shrugged. "Bad habit. Besides—I was _hungry_."

Hardcastle nodded as he forked up the last bite of pie. "Here," he handed his empty plate over to join Mark's, "you can take 'em in to her."

Mark shot a look over his shoulder toward the kitchen door then back at the judge. "It's okay?"

"Yeah, sure. She just won't want you poking around while she's cooking." He raised his eyes in a way that suggested he'd caught a little heat for that from time to time. "Clean-up is okay."

Mark entered the kitchen warily, carrying the plates as evidence of his good intentions. Sarah was sitting at the table, compiling a grocery list. "You may put them in the sink," she said, sparing him barely a glance.

He did as he was told and then hesitated a moment before making his offer. "I could wash up."

This time her gaze came up fully. There might have been a hint of surprise but, if so, it was quickly suppressed and followed by a curt dismissal. "I'm sure His Honor has things for you to do."

Mark hoped not; it was almost nine and it had been a long day. He was half-tempted to creep out the kitchen door, but he figured that wouldn't set well with Sarah. So he gave her a polite nod and left the way he'd come in. His hopes for a quick and perfunctory "good-night" as he slipped out the front door were also dashed. Hardcastle was sitting at his desk and summoned Mark into the den before he could open his mouth.

"What?" McCormick groused. "We didn't bag the limit today?" He slouched down the steps reluctantly and dropped into a chair. "I was hungry _and_ tired. Now I'm just tired."

"It's not Cody, it's those two goons of his." Hardcastle was studying the top sheet of a pad of paper. "They're lawyered-up and not saying anything about who sent 'em."

"Cody's probably paid 'em off good, or they're afraid of him." Mark frowned. Another thought had intruded as he considered the goons and their motivations.

"Yeah, but Cody's means of paying them is about to take a hit, and the trick with that other part is to make those guys more afraid of _us_ than Cody."

"Ah . . . us?"

"Well, _you_—home invasion and kidnapping victim, not to mention assault."

Mark nodded absently and Hardcastle immediately cut into his distracted thoughts. "You paying attention here? What we need to do is go over your statement. The DA is going to want to know what's what. This has got to be more than a couple of low-lifes jumping another low-life—"

"That's what it sounds like to you, huh?" Mark said sharply.

"No. But that's what it'll sound like to them. They'll want to know if you had some private beef with those two. They're going to ask you six ways from Sunday if you had anything else going on—gambling, drugs, _anything_."

"Nothing. Judge, I've been clean for six months—"

Except for the black bag job at Cody Industries. If one, why not another?"

Mark stared at him. He finally answered coldly. "I only had one friend killed. There was only one guy who ordered that killing. My business was with Cody. That's all."

Hardcastle's smile took him by surprise. "_Perfect_," he said. "Tell 'em just like that. Stay calm; don't let 'em ruffle your feathers." He nodded. "I think you'll do fine. I'll set it up for tomorrow." He bent to jot something down on the pad by the phone.

Mark hadn't budged. The judge finally glanced up.

"I thought you said you were tired."

"I was," Mark muttered, "but there's something else about those two goons."

Hardcastle put his palm to his forehead, "Don't tell me—you knew 'em?"

Mark shook his head hastily. "Uh-uh—never laid eyes on 'em before. I went to bed, no phone calls, wake up with a sock in my mouth and looking down the barrel of a gun."

"I like that," Hardcastle nodded with satisfaction. "It's got immediacy. Tell it that way."

Mark look exasperated.

"What?" Hardcastle protested. "You're the guy who ticked off Cody. You had to figure something like this would happen. You stole his _car_."

"Flip's car."

"Okay," the judge conceded, "you stole the car Cody had stolen. But that just made him twice as dangerous. He was desperate to get his hands on it again."

"I get all that," Mark said. "What I don't get is how Cody's goons knew exactly where to find me, six hours after I got here. _Exactly_—I mean, come on, Judge, it's a big estate."

"Well, that—"

"And you know Sarah doesn't like me."

"Huh?"

"She doesn't. You heard her that night. She didn't like you bringing me here. She didn't want me in the gate house."

"_Huh_?"

"Yeah." Mark clung to his belligerent expression, then dropped his voice to a near whisper. "I think she dropped a dime on me. It makes sense doesn't it?"

Hardcastle was staring at him in patent disbelief. "How the hell would she know who to call?"

Mark kept his voice low. He was still working through the details himself and it was coming out in little pressured jolts. "She knew all about the case. I'll bet _you _blabbed about it—how you'd be having me back in your courtroom that morning. Then you called her to tell her you wouldn't be home for dinner, right?"

"Well . . . yeah, but—"

"And you left the file out on your desk here that night; I saw it the next day. And, hell, it was in the paper, the part about it being Cody's car."

"Yeah, that was news, ya know—"

"And how the hell did those guys know _exactly _where to find me?" Mark went back to that one salient fact. He sat up a little straighter—it was all so clear to him now. "Who _else_ could have known?"

You don't think maybe those guys just followed us home?"

Mark paused for a moment, then rejected the theory out of hand. "Uh-uh. If they had, why would they have waited until it was light out? That meant more chance of me being awake or you seeing what was going on. Nah, they must've come from somewhere _after_ we got here. It probably took Cody a while to sic them on me after he got word where I'd gone."

"Makes sense," the judge said grudgingly. "You just figured all this out?"

"Well, it's been a busy couple of days." Mark frowned for a moment and then glanced up at the judge speculatively. "And you mean you _believe _me?"

"I just said it makes sense, that's all. Doesn't mean she did it."

"I know, I know—she's your housekeeper and you don't want to believe it and—"

"And there was one other person who knew exactly where you were staying."

Mark froze. His frown froze, too. It was several full seconds before he finally choked it out. "_You_ snitched on me?"

"I think 'snitched' is a little harsh."

Mark was even more bolt upright as he sputtered, "That's what we call it where _I _come from."

"Okay, well, let's just say I knew a guy who knew Cody and owed me a big one. I figured if the word got back to him—and just him—and then something happened—"

"You mean like me getting killed?"

"Nah, they weren't gonna _kill_ ya—not while they didn't know where you stashed the car."

"No, they would've shot me _after_ I told them."

"And you weren't gonna do that, right? So, anyway, if a couple of goons showed up here knowing just where to look for you, it'd be a _prima facie_ case that Cody was dirty. We'd still need to prove the murder, but at least I'd have pretty good grounds for going after him."

"That's why you wouldn't let Sarah put me in that gardener's trailer like she wanted?"

Hardcastle wrinkled his nose. "Bad sight-lines from here."

"I was bait."

Hardcastle grinned. "Pretty good bait, too."

"You shoulda told me." Mark hesitated, thinking that one through, and then blurted out, "You didn't _trust_ me."

Hardcastle shrugged, but at least he wasn't grinning anymore. "Hey, kiddo, what you were saying back there in my chambers made sense, but 'innocent until proven guilty' carries a lot of weight. I needed to _know_ that Cody was guilty. And I was right here," he jabbed the armrest of his chair with one finger, "shotgun at the ready, waiting for the show to start."

"In your robe and slippers."

Another shrug and, "I like being comfortable on a stakeout. Anyway, they weren't getting you out of here."

"And you believed me then, after the goons showed up, that I wasn't lying to you about Cody?"

"Kidnapping is a pretty convincing crime."

"Yeah, especially from the victim's point of view," Mark grumbled. Then he added stiffly, "I never lied to you."

"About Cody, no."

"About anything, so far."

Hardcastle kept his expression neutral. "I didn't lie to you, either, sport."

"Technicality, Hardcase."

"Okay, well, I wasn't ready to trust you with all the details that first night."

"How about now?"

"I just did, didn't I?"

Mark sighed. "I mean the _next_ set of important details. Sheesh."

Hardcastle sat back, studying him for a moment. He finally nodded once, gravely. "Okay, yeah. Next time I'll tell ya when you're gonna be bait."

Mark dropped his forehead onto the palm of his hand, shook his head slowly, and muttered, "Great, just great. Well, it's a step in the right direction at least."

"And Sarah doesn't hate you."

"No, I guess not. At least she didn't sic a couple of goons on me. That was _you_."

"I can't believe it took you three days to figure that out."


End file.
